Robert warns against encouraging children to learn creative writing:

Send him to sea (Melville) or up the Mississippi (Twain).  Sell him into bondage (Douglass) or lock him in the attic (Dickinson).  Teach him how to gamble (Poe)--or how to get away with murder (Villon).

Or send him to work in a library (Philip Larkin), a bank (T. S. Eliot), as an insurance clerk (Franz Kafka) or for the Post Office (Trollope). If a Post Office worker can moonlight as a Trollope, perhaps a trollop can spend her spare time handling letters – French ones, anyway. Generally, though, if someone has a talent for creative writing they don’t need to be taught; if they have none, but spend their time learning to write creatively rather than plumb creatively, there will be far too much sewage.

Whatever we do, we must not teach students Shakespeare. It’s too difficult. Their brains will be overloaded and they won’t be able to express themselves. Martin Samuel in The Times discusses this reworking of the love sonnet from Romeo and Juliet (Act 1 Scene V) by Coordination Group Publications, “the UK’s leading educational publisher”, according to its website:

Girl: What are you thinking about?
Boy: Oh, just moons and spoons, in June.
Girl: Wow. Give us a snog then. 

Go to the CGP chatroom and find a thousand satisfied customers. One thought the books “helpfull”. Another was “espacially pleased” (maybe he was in a very big classroom). A young girl felt encouraged because “my weekest subject would have to be biology” (wow, is she in for a shock). “The system recommended in the books works very well if you want to learn something thouroughly,” announced another student. And juxtaposed with these innocent revelations were endorsements from teachers. A school in Leyland, a college in Havant, a deputy head writing in London. Not one noticed that certain correspondents appeared unable to spell their names (unless Gema and Johny really were born one consonant short of a load). Nobody associated dumbing down with growing up dumb.

CGP may produce other GCSE revision texts that are not secret agents in this war against intelligence but, when let loose on Shakespeare, a very modern tragedy unfolds. In an attempt to make the writing accessible to the Big Brother generation, all reason for study is lost. Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1, according to CGP:

Tybalt: Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.

Benvolio: Leave it out, big nose.

Instead of attempting to engage the class in the work of a genius who brought such richness to our language, the entry level for the modern student is now crass and unsophisticated. Instead of trying to shake future generations out of complacency, their ignorance and lack of interest is presumed. We no longer aspire to education but to maintenance. We babysit, really, until X Factor begins. We depict Shakespeare as boring and obscure, then wonder why teenagers produce exam papers full of gibberish and misunderstanding.

The message board on The Times Educational Supplement website was also in the news this week, after teachers posted excerpts from English exam papers produced by 14-year-olds. Macbeth was told to “sort his head out” by his wife, in one answer. Another had him in “full-on soliloquy mode”. Confusing the actor Leonardo DiCaprio across two films, a pupil had Romeo drowning on the Titanic. Our teachers are forced to smile and find this charming; presumably because the alternative is minicabbing.

This is not how it should be, or how they want it to be. On May 27 the TES website carried 47 posts on the subject of whether disaffected learners are helped by making allowances for their behaviour, or whether greater expectations would achieve better results. Almost unanimously, the teachers were in favour of aiming high. And yet the UK’s “leading educational publisher” peddles its revision texts in a white flag of intellectual defeat.

“Everyone else just gives you dreary revision books with only the boring stuff in and no entertainment. Boo. Hiss. We’re different — we always try to make sure you’re gonna enjoy using our books.” Wotcha mean gonna ain’t a word. Sin a book, innit. You fick or somefink?

As for the boring stuff, presumably they mean the play; the one that took a love story that had been around since 1476 and redefined it so exquisitely that many believe it is Shakespeare’s own. That gave our language the phrases “fool’s paradise” and “wild goose chase”, introduced the words ladybird and inauspicious and renamed the aligarto (from the Spanish) the alligator. So enduring is the language of Romeo and Juliet that the play most recently appeared as a reference point in the lyric to I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor by the Arctic Monkeys.

CGP would like to convince schoolchildren that Shakespeare is cool, too — he appears on a cover as a cartoon figure, wearing shades — but does not have the courage of its convictions, so ends up selling him, and them, short. The writers — Shakespeare gets a quarter credit — will no doubt argue that everything of relevance is covered, in a form that is accessible to all. Yet our experiences suggest education in Britain is not producing a wave of whiz-kids. No wonder.